1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to data processing systems and in particular to methods for web browsing using placemarks and contextual relationships within data processing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet contains a vast amount of information that is spread across an equally vast number of web sites. A web user searching for information on the Internet will often begin by utilizing a search engine (e.g., Google®, a registered trademark of Google, Inc.) to perform a search, the search result containing a list of web links (e.g., that link to various web sites) that may or may not be of interest to the user. The user will generally click on some of the links provided by the search in an attempt to glean desired information from at least some of the linked web sites; however, there is a considerable amount of trial and error involved. When the user does happen upon a piece of desired information in one of the linked web sites, there is no way to save the exact location of the web page containing that piece information. The common alternative is to bookmark the web page containing the piece of desired information, leaving the user with only a hope of quickly finding that exact location of the web page again. Because of the considerable effort involved in this trial and error approach, the user may also want to remember the sequence of web sites visited during the search for future reference. Instead, a user is likely to end up with many open web sites (e.g., where each web site is open in a new window or where each web site is open within a different tab of a single web browser window), and the user will have to remember the sequence of his/her navigation through those web sites as well as try to remember where within each of those web pages the desired information is located. A collection of bookmarked web sites can help somewhat, but such a list only provides a gross collection of information that a user will still have to sift through.
As mentioned, a tabbed web browser window (e.g., containing a plurality of tabs) can be used to open a plurality of web sites (or web pages), where one of the plurality of web sites (or web pages) is open within each one of the plurality of tabs of the tabbed browser window. More generally, a tabbed window is a window that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, where the tabs are used to navigate between the documents. While tabbed windows are most commonly associated with web browsers, they may also be used in web applications and text editors. Tabbed windows help to reduce on-screen clutter, but they do not present related information within a particular context together. Any contextual grouping of the information contained within the tabs would have to be performed manually by the user, making tab content management a tedious process. It is also not uncommon for a user browsing the Internet to have a browser window open with many tabs. Thus, it would be easy for the user to forget which tab contains what information and how the information in one tab is related to the information in another tab.
Mashups, which provide the ability for users to build their own web applications through the aggregation of content from a plurality of web sites, can be used to provide some contextual grouping of information within a web page. However, the interactions between the aggregated content needs to be supported by a server, and often by the providers of each of the various pieces of aggregated content. Moreover, such interactions enabled by a mashup would be done on a server and thus would impact all users of the server.